Name: Prom 44: Stravinsky’s The Firebird
Start: 2023-08-18T19:30:00
Location: Royal Albert Hall

Gemma New

Pavel Kolesnikov

BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra

Steve Reich’s music is made of movement. Patterns shift, collide, and reform. The smallest rhythm grows into something vast. A single chord can shimmer like glass.

In Three Movements, the music constantly moves and turns. Repeating figures stretch and ripple until you lose track of where the downbeat lands. Variations for Winds, Strings and Keyboards is a kaleidoscope of colour. Chords slide past one another, glowing one moment, dissolving the next.

Electric Counterpoint, written for both pre-recorded and live guitars, turns repetition into a trance. With Bryce Dessner at its heart, expect a sound both mechanical and deeply human. Then The Four Sections pulls the whole orchestra into Reich’s pulsing universe – strings, winds, brass and percussion stacked into layers that vibrate with raw power.

Steve Reich at 90: The Four Sections

The Glasshouse International Centre for Music

New Zealand-born conductor Gemma New makes her Proms debut leading the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra in Stravinsky’s The Firebird, Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 2 and the European premiere of Samy Moussa’s Symphony No. 2.